Shirley

Shirley is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811-12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against a backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry.The novel's popularity led to Shirley's becoming a woman's name. The title character was given the name that her father had intended to give a son. Before the publication of the novel, Shirley was an uncommon - but distinctly male - name and would have been an unusual name for a woman. Today it is regarded as a distinctly female name and an uncommon male name. While Brontë was writing Shirley, three of her siblings died. Her brother Branwell died in September 1848, and her sister Emily fell ill and died in December. Brontë resumed writing, but then her only remaining sibling, her sister Anne, became ill and died in May 1849. Some critics believe that the character of Caroline Helstone was loosely based on Anne and it has been speculated that Brontë originally planned to let Caroline die but changed her mind because of her family tragedies. However, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte's lifelong friend, claimed that the character of Caroline was based on herself. Charlotte Brontë told Elizabeth Gaskell that Shirley is what she believed her sister, Emily Brontë, would have been if she had been born into a wealthy family. Again, Ellen Nussey, who knew Emily as well as anyone outside the family, didn't recognise her in Shirley. The maiden name of Mrs. Pryor is Agnes Grey, the name of the main character in Anne's first novel. She was based on Margaret Wooler, the principal of Roe Head School, which Brontë attended as both student and teacher. Robert Moore is a mill owner noted for apparent ruthlessness towards his employees - more than any other mill owner in town. He has laid off many of them, apparently indifferent to their consequent impoverishment. AuthorCharlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 - 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works (including her best known novel, Jane Eyre) under the pen name Currer Bell.In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Constantin Héger (1809-1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Héger (1804-1887). During her time in Brussels, Brontë who favoured the Protestant ideal of an individual in direct contact with God, objected to the stern Catholicism of Madame Héger, which she considered to be a tyrannical religion that enforced conformity and submission to the Pope. In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the school was cut short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look after the children after their mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the school. Her second stay was not happy: she was homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Héger. She returned to Haworth in January 1844 and used the time spent in Brussels as the inspiration for some of the events in The Professor and Villette. Brontë's third novel, the last published in her lifetime, was Villette, which appeared in 1853. Its main themes include isolation, how such a condition can be borne, and the internal conflict brought about by social repression of individual desire. Its main character, Lucy Snowe, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture and religion different from her own, and falls in love with a man (Paul Emanuel) whom she cannot marry.